My first cruise with my powered wheelchair, and Phil.

Eddie Pleban
22 hours ago
2 min read

My First Cruise with my powered wheelchair was in 2019. A fellow stroke survivor Phil and I sailed into the Artic Circle too see the Northern lights on board ‘Safire Princes', unlike the 'Borealis' she is one of the larger ships that can carry 4 thousand passengers and I don’t know how many crew.

The lights don’t look like this with the naked eye you need a digital camera or phone, one of the Americans emailed us these photos so if you are going to see the light be prepared.

As you can see see from the photos we had a grand time with full access anywhere on board, our accessible cabin was very large so no problems getting my chair in, the toilet and shower room was walk in, no step.

The only hiccup we had was when we arrived at 'Alter' Norway we found our that the ship was to big to get along side and used their tenders to ferry passengers ashore meaning, as a wheelchair user I couldn’t go ashore.

Many know that I suffer with emotional lability which is a by product of stroke e.g. I can cry or laugh without notice or if the I have to face a situation like this my emotions become uncontrollable and overtake everything in my life, and it did.

However, I did manage to get ashore as my family contacted the ship and persuaded them to find a way to get me ashore and they did.

The staff captain and senior entertainment officer came to see me to tell me that they will help to get me ashore and to make my way to the liberty boats on arrival they had a manual chair and a young lady from the entertainment crew, they help me too the tender ones along side the crew helped me to the wheel chair and my chaperon pushed me to a taxi waiting for me and Phil I felt like royalty all the other passengers were get on a coach.

I thank the captain and crew for making this possible and the final surprise was that Princes Lines paid the bill.